


The Golden Years

by Maggie Hall (charlottechill)



Category: Wiseguy
Genre: 1990s, Early Work, Family, Family Dynamics, M/M, Male Slash, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 23:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/Maggie%20Hall
Summary: Frank wants to commit but is afraid of how his teenaged son will react.





	The Golden Years

**Author's Note:**

> Originally appeared in McPikus Interruptus 3, published in 1994. Slightly edited for typos and extra words.

The ongoing argument was days old, and Frank McPike was afraid. Afraid because he could feel his resolution flagging, could feel the urge to give in to the temptation of his lover’s words. They had preyed on him since the first entreaty, swapped over dinner and candles and wine, when he had laughed aloud and tried to pass it off as a dumb joke. Well it wasn’t a joke, not anymore. It hadn’t been since Vinnie’s hurt eyes over breakfast the next morning, his whispered, ‘I meant what I said.’ Frank had known Vince was serious even as he had denied it, because the one and only discrete thought that had entered his head at the time was an image of his son and the tiny, terrified voice that whispered, what would Drake think of me, if he knew?

Frank had made the mistake, that morning, of meeting the sincere blue stare and trying to assuage the hurt there. The argument hadn’t stopped since. It had been put on hold as the demands of the job, the mundanities of life and the sweet pleasure of loving each other demanded, but it hadn’t stopped. And it wasn’t going to stop until he admitted what Vinnie already knew: that he wanted to settle down with Vince more than—almost—anything.

So he had tossed the job out on the table as bargaining chip and barricade, and his lover’s determination had grown stronger and more willful with each passing day. It always seemed to come down to this living room, with its simulated wood accent wall, and its imitation crystal light covers and its shabby furniture, so frequently that he had developed a nerve-deep fear of stepping across its threshold.

“Frank,” Vince was saying now, “you tell me to live what I believe in, to be true to my own sense of justice within the law all the time, but you don’t do it yourself. Come on, Frank, just do it for once. It’s way past time you listened to your own advice. Come on, Frank. Live with me.”

“There are a hundred reasons that it wouldn’t work, Vince,” he repeated for the thousandth time, removing his glasses to rub at tired eyes. “It is not a good idea. It would ruin everything else. You know that.”

“No, I don’t know it,” Vince replied with hard-voiced anger. “This job’s killing you, and hiding who you are is killing you. It eats at you every day, every time you turn away from me or get in your car to go home to an empty house.”

Frank almost cringed. “You’re missing the bigger picture, here. It’s not the job, it’s not living alone that eats at me, it’s life. Life eats at me.”

“Bullshit,” Vince said, warding off with a wave of his hand the rationale that had seen Frank through over thirty years. “Yeah you like to say that, but it’s just the hiding. It’s just the pretending all the time, every day, without ever a break. It doesn’t matter where we are, either,” he accused. “D.C., Roanoke, San Francisco or Detroit. You’re so fuckin’ paranoid somebody’s gonna see you holding a guy’s hand, or doin’ any other innocent, legal thing, that you can’t even take a breath, and don’t try tellin’ me that’s the job. You told me yourself that bein’ undercover sucks, that it’s not healthy, but you’re living undercover every single day.”

Frank sighed deeply, returning his glasses to his nose and sparing a long look for his lover. “Fine, it’s not healthy.” He offered the white flag of agreement carefully, laying down his terms before Vince could even begin to assume unconditional victory. “It’s not healthy, but it’s necessary. Somebody’s got to do the job, and the job doesn’t accept homosexuals.”

“Jesus, Frank, will you get off your high horse for a minute and listen to me?” Vince groaned, the frustration of weeks stored up in his voice. “I’m not sayin’ give it up, because you and I both know you wanna keep doin’ it.”

“Right, we’ll just move in together and my supervisor will send us a nice fruit basket as a housewarming gift,” he sneered.

“Paul Beckstead can go fuck himself for all I care,” Vince said heatedly. “Between us we’ve given almost twenty-five years. That’s enough to take the chance.”

“Huh-uh, not ‘chance’. You wave this in front of the brass’ faces and it’s a sure bet we’ll be out on our butts before we can say ‘equal protection under the law’.”

Vince was silent, thinking hard; Frank could almost see the neurons firing as his lover moved to the fake mantle over the fake fireplace, hooking an elbow over it and absently crossing a foot over one ankle.

God damn him, Vince was going over the arguments with a microscope. The seams were showing, and Vinnie was systematically tearing them apart, one by one. Premonition warned him that he wouldn’t manage to pass inspection this time, and he made a concerted effort to shore up his defenses for when Vince finally stumbled onto his real reasons.

“I’m not sayin’ wave it in front of their faces,” Vinnie muttered, his voice just barely reaching the overstuffed armchair Frank had chosen as his last bastion of defense. “I’m not saying that we gotta put a notice in the Office computer’s bulletin board. I’m sayin’ if we play it cool at work, they’d be fools to take out two players as good as you and me. They couldn’t afford it.”

“Come on, Vince, don’t be naïve. They could afford it to make an example of us if they wanted to, and you know it.”

Vince exploded, yelling, “What example, for God’s sake!” and just as quickly regained control. The stress was hurting them both, destroying the harmony that was rarely disturbed between them nowadays, and Frank knew he should just come out with it. But he couldn’t. “What point? You tellin’ me there isn’t a single queer working in the whole, entire FBI? Come on, you know better than that. There has to be.”

“Name one.”

Vince shrugged, rising to his full height and moving to stand directly in front of Frank’s chair. He thrust his chin out belligerently, forcing Frank to cant his head back to see his face. “Just because I don’t know any doesn’t mean none exist. Try again, oh Great One.”

He did. “Vinnie,” he said cautiously, “as far as I know, nobody’s ever tried to live with a gay lover under the OCB umbrella. Not even once, and I don’t want to be the first, okay? I’ve played sacrificial lamb at the altar of morality once too often in my life and I’m not gonna do it again. Can’t you just leave it at that?”

“No,” Vince said flatly, his lips rounding into a full Terranova pout, “because if I did, then we wouldn’t have what we deserve to have, what we both need to have.

“Besides,” he said, the pout increasing and slipping out in his petulant tone, “you’re makin’ it sound like the job’s more important than you and I are, and I know you don’t believe that. I just don’t understand you.” Vince knelt down, balancing on his heels and steadying himself with hands laid gently along Frank’s thighs. His look was so full of trust and conviction that Frank almost opened his mouth and blurted out the truth. But only almost. Instead, he turned his eyes away from that look as Vinnie started again, the casual tone signaling the new angle of attack. “Bein’ a civil servant isn’t the pinnacle of career goals, Frank. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve already worked out about ten million contingencies.”

Frank turned sharply to pin Vinnie with a hard look, while his mind scrambled to adjust. He’d forgotten about that, forgotten that the ‘fear of poverty’ defense wouldn’t hold water against Vinnie’s stashed wealth, and scratched it off his rapidly diminishing list of excuses. He found his answer in Vinnie’s picture of his integrity, cringing inside for misusing it so blatantly. “I’m not gonna live off the dirty money you got from Lococco, Vince, so you can drop that one right now.”

“Fine,” Vince said, backing off both physically and verbally, sitting down on the end of the coffee table two whole feet away, and clasping his hands together between his knees. “But we gotta serve the ball, Frank. We gotta start the op. Let them play it any way they want, but I swear we’ll end up on our feet. We can do investigative work in the private sector if it comes to that; find dirt on crooked politicians, whatever you wanna do.” And Vince tried to appease Frank’s cringing morals by turning the money into the asset Frank already knew it was. “We don’t have to live on Roger’s money, but we can put it to good use, can’t we? You can’t bitch about usin’ it to get more crud off the streets. Between you and me and ten million bucks, nothin’ could stop us.”

“So what,” he sneered, hating himself for doing it, “I’m just gonna throw away my entire life and play Tonto to your Lone Ranger?”

“Uh-uh, Kemosabe,” Vince grinned wolfishly, shaking his head, “you’re the white boy in this room.”

Frank blanched, his thoughts in a whirl, acknowledging the panic inside him from a safe distance. “I can’t even keep you on a short leash when I’m sanctioned to do it.”

“Yes you can, Frank,” Vinnie replied with utter and warm sincerity, a profound truth spilled between them sparkling and brilliant, like diamonds onto black velvet. “You always could. Always.”

He felt that truth to his marrow, and closed his eyes against the purity of Vince’s emotional appeal. “Vinnie,” he pleaded, knowing he wasn’t being fair and not caring. He couldn’t afford to be fair: every time he tried, he saw his son’s face in his mind, imagined the betrayal in brown eyes and knew he wouldn’t be able to have the life Vince wanted him to lead. “You’re tearin’ me apart. Please, just let it go.”

“I can’t,” Vince answered softly, ignoring his pain. So not even that was working anymore; Frank had trained him too well, to keep his eyes on his goal, to keep his feelings from muddying the waters. “You’re closer than family to me—” Frank kept all reaction from his face, thinking again of Drake, of not being able to weigh Vinnie’s love and what he, himself, wanted against his son’s approval— “and I wanna stop fucking around with this. I wanna be with you for a lotta years to come, Frank, and I don’t want to do it from two cities six hours away.” He brushed a hand through rich, dark hair, and Frank watched the anticipation hiding just beneath the love on the handsome face. “What you and I have is more important to me than the job. I know that if you had to choose between it or me, you’d go along with me. I know that. But you know I’d never do that to you. I love ya too much, okay? You’ve got me by the balls, Mr. McPike.” His mobile brows furrowed into a frown, creasing his forehead and tugging down on the corners of his mouth. “So you tell me what I have to do to make it okay.”

Frank shook his head, feeling the cold sweat of fear beading along his spine. There weren’t any more denials, nothing else that Vince would accept. His career had embittered him, made him old before his time; he resented it, in some ways, almost as much as he resented his ex wife. And Vince knew him well enough to know that. But he had run out of ideas, so he tried, feebly, one last time, to deflect his lover from the truth that he could not speak.

“Vince, the job—”

“Don’t even say it, Frank,” the soft voice interrupted. Vince stood up and walked listlessly toward the window, staring out with blind eyes. The thick muscles were corded hard and tight under the t-shirt Vince wore, stressed with tension and frustration that Frank had instigated, and fed as attentively as a mother suckling a child. Frank could not tell Vinnie the truth, couldn’t face seeing his own demoralizing insecurity reflected in Vinnie’s eyes. He couldn’t face Vinnie, period, but resettled himself on one hip to face the kitchen, looking at anything but his lover and feeling the damp, chill sweat of fear on him. “This was never about the job, Frank. Not for me.” The words intruded on Frank’s thoughts, so softly and so filled with intelligence that they made him tremble. He closed his eyes, waiting…waiting… “and not for you either.” There was a silence, sudden and stilling, and Frank had to look. Didn’t want to. Had to. He had to see the moment of revelation, the moment he was absolutely certain was happening right now behind big baby blues. The moment when bare wires sparked, making the connection, allowing Vince to jump out of this blind alley and onto the right track.

When Vince hit him with it, Frank was overwhelmed by the depth of his own cowardice.

“It’s Drake, isn’t it?”

He felt tears stinging, felt his face harden and solidify until there was no hope for expression, no chance for any of his own atrocious inadequacies to show. He closed his eyes against the pain of Vinnie knowing, of Vince knowing just how much of a coward he was, dropping his head back on the chair because he didn’t think he could hold up the weight a second longer. “Let’s just say,” he whispered, hearing his own voice dry and parchment-like in his ears, “let’s say I agree to take leave of my senses and shack up with you.” And now the stress was building unbelievably higher inside him, forcing the tears through his closed eyelids. “What am I supposed to tell him?” he croaked, and damned himself for the loss of control. “What in hell am I supposed to say to my son, Vince?”

“Aw, Frank—” the words were aching and high-pitched, filled with pain that somehow, didn’t surprise him. Hands caught at his shoulders, drawing him up into strong arms that protected him—from himself, from Vinnie, from everything. “Frank, why’d you let me waste all my time worryin’ about the fucking job?” His voice was soft and quiet and streaming over Frank, the words barely more than soothing nonsense. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth, for Godssake?”

The tears welled up in him and the fear took him completely. Drake, looking at him with a child’s eyes so full of trust betrayed, so angry and indicting…. He knew it would happen. Knew it. “Right,” he choked against warm, hard muscle, “just tell you that I can’t even face my own kid?”

“Yeah,” the soothing voice murmured, “just like that.”

How was he supposed to express it? How was he supposed to deal with a certainty that he couldn’t confront? The words continued, washing over him as he drew in great, gasping breaths past the knifing pain in his throat, as he choked and coughed and tried to do anything but cry. He had survived fourteen months in prison; faced off drug dealers, gunmen and peddlers in human flesh; had lived through Jenny’s alcoholism, her Great Awakening and the eventual divorce, but he did not know how to get himself through the look he kept imagining in his son’s eyes. How in hell was he supposed to say that?

“Vinnie,” he choked, holding on tight to the solid, warm reality, “I got more faith in you and me makin’ it than any two people in the world. I love you, and I like you, and I trust you with my life.” He sniffed hard, shuddering with the implications for himself, “But I still can’t do this, I can’t choose between you and my son.”

“Frank, I wouldn’ta asked you to.” He felt the whisper more than heard it, the air flowing so gently across his ear. “I’d never ask you to do that.” The arms around him loosened and he clutched tighter, not wanting to be seen. Hands stroked up and down his back, gentling him, giving him his privacy, and he was more grateful than he could say. “You did too good a job, ran too good a scam, Frank. I didn’t understand it, couldn’t figure out why you were fighting me so hard. You kept me moving in the wrong direction so well that I never even thought about him. He’s all you’ve been thinkin’ about, all this time, isn’t he?”

Frank nodded, face pressed tight against his lover’s neck, knowing he was an old, stupid jerk and riding the waves of pain-filled uncertainty, determined not to get caught up in the undertow. “Jeez, I’m sorry, Frank. It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. Everything’ll be okay now.” 

Frank sniffed, pushing his glasses up and wiping his face against Vinnie’s t-shirt while the words continued on, not stopping, but repeating themselves over and over until Frank started, belatedly, making sense of them.

Vinnie wasn’t disappointed.

Vinnie wouldn’t try to make him do anything that he didn’t want to do.

Vinnie, maybe, understood.

It wasn’t too many minutes after, that Frank noticed he felt dumber clinging and crying than he felt about his inability to face his son. This, after all, was the present, and feeling like an idiot in the present was the only thing in the world worse than thinking about feeling like an idiot in the future….

He forcibly got a grip on himself, pulling away from the reassuring physical presence of his lover and trying to reach the Kleenex on the coffee table.

“Well,” he muttered after blowing and wiping and drying his glasses, trying to force his insecurities back down, “I’m glad that’s outta the way.”

Now Vince understood, now he knew the truth and wouldn’t keep up the confrontations. One basic, chemical certainty about Sicilians was that they didn’t come between family. It was an unwritten genetic law.

And with the truth laid bare between them, Frank felt a sense of relief that carried him through the unnaturally quiet morning. He also felt like an ass, embarrassed for being so damned frightened, but at least the dread was over. It had been said, and the matter was shelved.

He managed to keep believing that for almost two hours, when Vince’s absent distraction finally set his nerves tingling. He’d thought Vince was reading, giving him some room, until he realized that his lover hadn’t turned the page for almost an hour.

“Good story?” he prodded, stupidly.

Vince was startled to attention. “Huh?”

Frank pointed. “The book. Good reading?” he asked, ignoring his itching palms and rising nerves.

“Oh.” Vince put the book down, abandoning pretense and turning the full power of his attention, like a laser beam focusing, back on Frank. “We’ll get a two, three bedroom place and fake it for Drake.”

He should have known. He couldn’t have guessed. “What?”

“We’ll fake it for Drake,” Vince repeated, “pretend we’re just sharin’ the house because it’s cheaper, or whatever you wanna tell him.”

It was a good idea. A stroke of genius. It scared Frank to death. Despite all of his wariness and all of the reasons this could take the Number One slot on his ever-lengthening list of Life’s Stupid Mistakes, he couldn’t deny the simplicity and appeal of the solution, couldn’t deny the desire to settle down with Vince like they both meant it, and appease his fear at the same time. It was the best of both worlds, and there had to be a catch.

“You’ve just been sittin’ there,” he said flatly, “for almost three hours, waitin’ for me to ask, haven’t you?”

“No,” Vinnie shook his head slowly, “I’ve been sitting here thinkin’ about you and Drake. And if you want my opinion—”

“I don’t.”

“—I think you should tell him.”

“Why, pray tell,” he asked, surreptitiously scratching his palms on the rough upholstery fabric of the chair arm, “would I want to do a stupid thing like that?”

“Because he’s your son,” Vince said simply, “and he deserves to know who his dad is. You’ve been lyin’ to him for years, that’s probably half the trouble between you two.”

“Thank you, Dr. Spock.” But his heart was pounding in his chest, and the panic was rising swiftly, overflowing the banks of his frayed control.

“You know I’m right,” Vince whispered, his certainty slipping like a stiletto between Frank’s ribs, finding his vulnerable spots and sliding home. “It’ll be good for you, and it’ll be good for him, too, to know who you are, who you love and what’s important to you. No games, no more deceptions.” Frank was too arrested by the image to even answer, and Vince seemed more than happy to fill the void of silence.

“Come on, Frank, don’t you get it? He’s seventeen years old. In less than a year he’ll be able to vote, have to register for the draft, the whole adult thing. I think he’ll be able to handle knowin’ something about who his dad’s in love with.”

“You’re crazy.”

Vinnie smiled, rising off the couch in one powerfully graceful move, coming closer to perch on the arm of Frank’s chair. A hand reached out to gently stroke, warm and reassuring, along the dry, cool skin of Frank’s cheek. “That the best you can come up with?”

“How about a simple ‘no’? N-O. I’m not gonna do it, I can’t, and if you try and push me to, then I won’t move in with you in the first place.”

He realized what he had agreed to only when he saw the light of pleasure in his lover’s eyes. Jesus Mary and Joseph, he was going to go and do it.

“Frank,” he said solemnly, “if you really don’t want to do it, then don’t do it. I hate livin’ the lie, but I’ve done it for you and the rest of the whole, damned world for years now. I can keep doin’ it for you and Drake. I’m not stupid, Frank.” He smiled, a wide appeal of certainty that he saved for special moments, special revelations, daring Frank to challenge him, “so I’ll take what I can get. I sell mom’s house, you cancel your lease on this dump, and we get some nice little place together.”

Frank just sat there, trying to sort out the conflicting emotions in his head, knowing he wanted what Vince was offering, wanted it so bad he could taste it in his heart. Knowing as well, that he wouldn’t risk the fragile, new stability he and Drake had achieved, and that by measuring that as most important, he wasn’t being fair to anyone but himself. Words were coming out of his mouth unheeded, and he didn’t know who they were for. “He’d figure it out on his own, eventually, either way.” It was more a question than a comment.

“He’s a cop’s son—he’s your son. What do you think?” The blood drained out of Frank’s face, and for a minute he wished he was prone to fainting; it was a predilection of Jenny’s, and a dramatically effective way to avoid a confrontation. “Hey, hey,” Vince whispered, fingers under his chin drawing his head around, his eyes up to find only support in his lover’s intent stare. “I love you. I’m not gonna get in between you and Drake, Frank, I swear it.” Vince bent down, and Frank felt the warm, dry brush of lips against his temple. “Whatever you wanna do.”

•••

The weeks went by with shocking speed.

The Terranova homestead in Brooklyn was on the market, Frank’s lease had been altered to month-to-month, and the embarrassingly plush condo on the outskirts of Baltimore was in escrow. Frank looked around his tacky little living room with almost-affection, the kind of affection he had for relatives he hated, just as they were leaving for home. He was happy that he’d be moving out soon, happy to be getting the rest of his life in order.

Vince was being fantastic about everything, acting like a kid on a shopping spree where decorating was concerned—a real surprise, in Frank’s eyes. Two hundred and thirty pounds of tall, dark and handsome asking for linen samples at Macy’s was hilarious, and Frank had coughed himself sick trying not to laugh.

Vince was paying cash for the nicer things, trying to be blasé about it, and Frank had swallowed his scruples and pretended not to notice, because Vince was so goddamned excited about it all. He had faced, with the first furniture purchase, the realization that Vince had never done this before, that he was Vinnie’s first serious, long term partner, and the thought had given him pause. It made him want to spoil and nurture the same way he had on his first honeymoon. It made him go shopping for a ring, or something, to give to Vince on their first day in the new home. And it made him look the other way whenever a purchase was made that Vinnie’s income alone probably hadn’t covered.

There were just a few loose ends.

Drake, as yet, had not been told. He and Vince had planned for the move to be a surprise, of sorts; an easy way to avoid the problem until after the step had been taken. But in light of Vinnie’s continued acceptance of the Law According to McPike, and the fact that all of this meant as much as it did to Vinnie, Frank was having serious second thoughts.

He just couldn’t imagine how Vince was going to feel when Drake came over for weekends. Vince would sleep in another, empty room, pretending to be ‘just good buddies’ while he cooked breakfast for three in the new skillet set he’d bought last week. Damn him, Vinnie’s very acceptance of Frank’s decision to hide it from Drake was the only thing that was making Frank reconsider. It was stupid. Vinnie’s ‘maybe he’ll handle it all right’ was pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking that had nothing to do with the high-strung, already disillusioned teenager who Frank had dealt with for seventeen years.

He had the telephone in hand before he could talk himself out of it, dialing Jenny’s number and praying no one was home.

“New Concepts Catering.”

“Jenny?”

“Oh,” she said, the professional voice exchanged for a longsuffering tone. “Frank. Sorry, I’m too busy for my own good—forgot it was the house line I was answering.”

“It’s okay. Listen, I don’t want to bother you, but I need a minute,” he said, praying that she’d find an excuse and get off the phone before he ruined everything.

“Sure.” She sounded genuinely concerned, a real mark of his own nervousness if she could tell just by the dozen or so words he’d spoken. “What’s wrong?”

Squeezing his eyes shut tight, Frank pinched at the bridge of his nose, trying to decide how to say it. “I need to see Drake this weekend. Do you know if he’s free?”

“He’s going to the football game on Friday, but that’s it. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Exactly.” He sighed, trying to force the tension out before the words. “I’m movin’ in with Vince next weekend. I guess it’s time to have that overdue father-son talk.”

Jenny’s silence was eloquent.

“Well?” he demanded, on the defensive now. “You told me I should do it. Vince told me I should do it. I’m gonna do it, unless you can think of a reason why I shouldn’t.” Please God, he prayed, come up with something. Anything.

“No,” she said, obviously trying to recover herself. “I just didn’t think you’d ever bring yourself to do it. And yes, I think you should. Especially…well, especially if you’re going to be…” she trailed off, and Frank took some small comfort from her struggle.

“Living with a guy?” he supplied, suppressing a satisfied twist of his lips.

He heard the expelled breath, and the tension behind her words, and felt even better. “Yeah. Living with a guy.” She changed the subject abruptly, deflating Frank’s sudden satisfaction. “Drake’s still at school, but I’ll tell him you want to see him. You’re still in Garden Grove right now?”

“Yes.” And because his insecurities were strangling him, because he was still sure that this was a mistake, he asked, “You really think it’s the right thing?”

“Yeah, Frank,” she said, her voice tight with discomfort. “I really think it’s the right thing.”

He didn’t believe her any more than he’d believed Vinnie. “Okay. Tell him to meet me at Castaic Park, at two on Saturday. He knows where it is. I’ll call Thursday to make sure it’s a go.”

“Okay. Frank?” she said, before he could hang up the phone, “I’m glad you’re finally dealing with this. And…I’m happy for you.”

“You’re happy I’m living with big, butch Vinnie to keep me satisfied? You’re happy I got a gay lover to spring on Drake?” he said, twisting the knife with the viciousness defensiveness brought. Jenny’d almost had a coronary when he’d told her, and for reasons and feelings he refused to name, the woman could still bring out the bastard in him like no one else.

“I’m happy you’ve found someone,” she said tightly, voice hard. “I’m happy you’re finally going on with your life, that you’ve stopped pretending you could work things out with me.”

Touché, Jenny. Touché. “Yeah,” he said, deflated. “Me, too.”

He hung up the phone and resolutely went back to sorting through his junk, determined to throw away the old garbage instead of carting it all the way to Maryland. Hiding behind the monotony of work.

Vinnie came in about four feet of old magazines and two filled Hefty cinch sacks later, arms loaded with packages and face lit with a beautiful smile. “Hey Frank,” he said, dropping the bags on the couch, “look what I got today.” The blue eyes met his, and the smile was wiped clean, shopping forgotten. “Whatsa matter?”

“I talked to Jenny today,” he said quietly. “I’m gonna see Drake on Saturday, if he’s free. I’m gonna tell him.”

“Frank?” Vince was surprised, almost as surprised as Frank himself was, probably. “Why? I thought we were gonna do the bachelors sharin’ the rent thing.”

“Yeah,” he said, sitting on the floor and leaning his back against the chair, “so did I. But it’s not right, Vince. It’s not right.”

Vinnie’s concern was a palpable thing. “Frank, you’re white.” He shrugged off his jacket and walked over, settling down on the floor beside Frank and holding out a hand. “This is scarin’ hell out of you.”

Frank nodded, accepting the hand and holding it like a lifeline in rough seas. Vince was solid, dependable; Vince was somebody he could count on to weather the emotional strain, and Frank needed that. Desperately.

“Yeah, it is. But you were right. He deserves to know. Hell, Jenny even agreed with you.”

Vince frowned, years-old jealousy still reacting to Frank’s ex-wife as if she were in the other room. “Then maybe I oughtta reconsider my position.”

“Just drop the macho thing for awhile, huh?” he snapped. “I’m not up to it.”

Vinnie eyed him closely, seeing, Frank was sure, every line of worry, every bitten nail and clouded emotion. “It’ll be okay,” Vince whispered, drawing him into a closer embrace. “Drake’ll handle it just fine.”

But, always true to his nature, Frank could only imagine the worst; could still see that hurt, betrayed, angry face glaring back at him, could hear the libelous, cutting insults that Drake was as prone to as the next kid his age. He didn’t know if he could take it.

“What if you’re wrong?”

Vinnie’s voice was as soft as silk, sliding over him, soothing ragged nerves with a lover’s touch and the vestiges of Mama Terranova’s unending well of compassion. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, maybe he won’t want to understand. Maybe he’ll run screaming. Maybe he won’t give a damn one way or the other. But it’s your decision, Frank. You’ve still got time to back out, and if that’s what you want to do, then do it.”

Frank looked up into Vinnie’s eyes and knew the guy meant what he said; whatever Frank decided, Vince would back him one hundred percent. It was that commitment that had made him decide in the first place. “No, I’m gonna do it. You said it yourself, he’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Yeah.” Vince nodded.

“Well then, if he’s gotta know, I’d rather he knew it from me.”

He was caught up in an all-over hug, pushed back onto the floor and surrounded by muscle and sinew, emotion and knowing hands and incredible urgency, and Vince was kissing him heatedly, startling him from fear into pleasure. “I love you, Frank,” Vince whispered against his neck. “Oh god, I love you.”

Frank was all too happy to switch gears, grateful not only for the support and the sincere emotion, but for the chance to table the issue for a while. His body was suddenly demanding sex, heat flashing through him, denim growing confining as blood pulsed with a purpose in his groin. “We gonna do it right here on the floor?” he gasped, needing it this way; impulsive, and hot enough to burn memory and emotion from him completely.

Vinnie stilled suddenly, making Frank realize that a heated romp hadn’t been on his lover’s agenda, but he only grasped Frank more firmly and said, “Yeah.”

Breath coming faster, hands slipping under loosened fabric and over tight, smooth skin, Frank forced an urgency on Vince to match his own. He wanted to be face down on the floor, clutching, heated, lost; filled to overflowing with Vinnie’s lust and the white-hot pleasure of sex that would sear his anxieties to cinders. “Good.”

•••

Thursday had come and gone, with a thumbs-up from Jenny and worried agreement from Drake, and Frank sat in the shade of an elm, looking out into the sunlight and messing nervously with paper bags. Like the skull and crossbones on poison labels, Frank knew that Little Tavern burger bags were a symbol of doom Drake would recognize, one that would set the stage for the conversation and put Drake in his most nervous, forgiving of moods. The only times he had ever greeted his son in a park with Little Taverns were when there was bad news: Jenny’s liver, the separation, the divorce; their first ridiculous conversation about girls and sex.

This had been a really, really dumb idea.

“Dad!” Frank jumped, his whole body tightening at the sound of his son’s voice, and turned to watch as Drake cautiously approached. It was there in the set of his shoulders, in the nervous glint of his eye; he knew something was up.

“Hi, Drake,” he said when his boy moved from light to shadow.

“Mom told me to ‘remember how much you love me’,” Drake said without preamble, dropping crosslegged onto the blanket beside him. “What’s wrong?”

Oh, great. He cleared his throat. “I’ve got something to tell you, and you’re probably not gonna like it.” Anxiety took a firmer hold and he started tearing strips off one of the bags. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so frightened, and thanked God for the remnants of the speech he had worked on for days that were floating around in his head. “Listen, you know your mom and I, we’ve been apart for a lot of years now. And well, I’m gettin’ older.” He faltered for a second, losing the thread of his speech. “It’s something that’s a part of me, Drake, something I really need, and it involves somebody I care a whole lot about. I didn’t mean for this to happen, it’s not something I planned, I swear—”

“Dad,” Drake interrupted him, sounding so relieved that Frank was startled out of his monologue. “Mom’s been dating for awhile, now, and I’ve had the chance to get used to the idea. It’s okay.”

“What?” A quick replay of his words released a sinking, lead weight in his guts; Drake was jumping to the obvious and right, but completely irrelevant, conclusion.

“I know the drill, Dad,” Drake said airily, completely at ease. “You’re seeing somebody, gettin’ married or something?” He was actually reaching for the burger bag, rummaging around inside it for stray french fries.

“Uh….” This was ridiculous.

The hand stilled, and slowly slithered back out of the bag to rest nervously in Drake’s lap. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked, returned uncertainty written all over him.

“I wish it were that simple,” Frank offered after a moment. Drake’s face was blank, defensive McPike-ism at its very best. Frank acknowledged with an arrow of pain in his heart that Drake had learned that look at his own knee, and drew in a breath that was the hardest of his life. “Look, I’m not tryin’ to worry you,” he began anew, knowing he was stalling for time and damning his cowardice to an eternal, burning Hell.

“Then you’re blowin’ it, big-time,” Drake snapped, his nerves speaking for him.

Frank held up a hand, forcing himself to meet his son’s anxious, angry eyes. Drake was prepared for the worst, now, and unfair as it was, Frank was damned glad. Maybe it would make this easier. “You know how much I care about Vince, don’t you?”

Drake’s head jerked up sharply. “Oh, shit. Is something wrong with Vinnie? What happened?”

“Stop jumping to conclusions,” Frank admonished, knowing it was his fault. If he could just say it, just open his mouth and say— “Nothing’s wrong with Vince, nothing’s wrong with anybody. I just need you to understand how I feel about him, what’s goin’ on for us and then, if you wanna talk about it, we can. Just as much as you want.”

He watched the deep inhale, the lids blink slowly as Drake tried to get a grip on his always volatile temper. “Dad, will you just tell me what’s goin’ on?”

Just tell him. Just open your mouth and…try as he might, he could only attack it obliquely. ‘I’m gay’ just would not, would not get past the block in his throat, the block in his whole cursed life. Under the circumstances, the word was an insult to the whole situation. “You know how much I care about Vince?” he repeated, rubbing his sweaty, itching palms over this thighs. “I mean, I really love him, you know that?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” Drake said carefully. “He’s your best friend.”

“Right.” Just tell him. “Well, he’s more than just my friend, Drake. He’s a lot more than that. Vince and I...I’m really in love with him,” he stuttered. “You get what I mean?”

“No,” he answered slowly, but the word was too long in coming, and Frank swallowed hard. Drake understood, all right. Some part of him understood perfectly.

Frank was very near trembling. “I have a…relationship with him,” he whispered, as gently as he knew how. “A long term…relationship.”

Drake’s face went blank and his eyes saucered wide, and Frank watched his son noticeably pale. Lips moved without sound; Drake swallowed, tried again. “What? What the hell are you talking about, Dad?” It was a crackling whisper, like a bad telephone connection.

“I’m talking about me,” he answered slowly, forcing himself not to blather on just to quiet his nerves, “I’m talking about something I’ve always been, something I’ve known about myself for a lot of years. I’m talkin’ about the fact that I don’t just like women, that I...” he trailed off, and suddenly it was Vinnie’s proud, arrogant face in his head, Vinnie’s loving, gentle promise in his heart, and he continued on with greater strength, “...that I like guys, too. That I’m in love with one, and that I’m finally gonna settle down again.”

The strained look on Drake’s face spoke volumes; Frank thought for a second that he’d have taken news of another terminal illness with more calm. “You’re tellin’ me you’re bi?” Drake finally asked in a small, small voice.

Frank felt the blush rise on his cheeks. “Trust a seventeen-year-old to know the lingo,” he offered feebly, trying and failing to cover his discomfort. “Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“Tell me it’s a sick joke.”

Frank felt the weight of his fear, his father and his fifties upbringing bearing down on him hard, but he said, as calmly as he could, “It’s not a joke. No matter how much you might want it to be, it’s not a joke.”

“Dad, that’s gross!” He was all shocked indignation and flustered emotion, the look on his face reminding Frank of someone fighting down nausea.

“No, it’s not gross. Especially where Vinnie’s concerned, it’s not gross. I love him. I wanna spend my life with him.” Frank watched, suddenly sick himself as he realized that all the puzzle pieces were only right now completing the picture for his son. Pallid color faded further, becoming ashen, and Drake’s head dropped loosely to his chest.

“Vinnie?” he breathed, “Vinnie too?”

“Yeah, Vinnie too.” He found a ghost of a smile, swallowing against rising bile. “I have that reaction myself, sometimes.” But it wasn’t funny, not at all, and Frank couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to consider the effect on Drake that it was Vince he was moving in with. He had been so concerned with what Drake would think of him, he hadn’t thought of what it would be to Drake, who had practically idolized Vince for years, to deal with the fact that Vince was bi, too.

Drake hadn’t even heard him. “Vinnie? But Vinnie’s…” he was muttering, trying to work it out in his head, “You and Vinnie are…”

“Listen,” he said, “I know this is a shock for you, but I didn’t know how else to say it.”

Drake looked up, then, and he was pinned by the look he had seen in his mind for weeks, a brown-eyed glare filled with anger and disgust. “Why did you have to say it at all?” he demanded, voice dripping with fury, “I don’t want to know!”

Life had played its little joke on Frank; the reality was worse than everything he had imagined, and the only thing Frank felt with any clarity was a familiar, years-old shame. He had to force the words out past the tight clutching in his throat that felt like death trying to take him. “Yeah, well, I didn’t have much choice. My lease is running out next week, and I’m gonna be moving. I’m gonna be moving in with Vince. And while I trust him with my life, I don’t trust him not to slip up and if you’ve got to know, I wanted it to be from my own mouth and not because Vince can’t resist an overt grope,” he said, knowing, now, what he had known since the whole issue arose, that this little scene should never have happened.

He just waited, through the angry silence, waited for more anger or confusion or whatever his kid came up with. This was hard, harder than anything he had ever had to do.

Drake was finding some kind of balance, glancing furtively up at him then away, his body shaking with reaction. When he spoke again his voice was measured, pale, and Frank was proud to his marrow that Drake was sitting here and trying to deal with it at all. 

“It’s not like this wouldn’t be a shock for anybody else,” Drake whispered. “I mean, you’ve always been so conservative, somebody who was always gonna be just the same.” The words didn’t ask for response, and Frank didn’t offer any. They were disjointed, Drake speaking whatever came to his mind, and Frank knew he’d sit here till midnight, listening, if that was what his son wanted. “And this…this isn’t like anything…you, Vinnie,” a shudder ran through him, “I looked up to you guys,” he whispered. “And now I find out you’re both fags.”

Frank suffered the endorsement like a body blow, crumpling inside but staying still for it, turning the other cheek because he was sure he deserved this—for the lies, for Jenny, for everything between him and Drake that just kept not working out.

The shade of the tree had fanned out, blanketing the whole day in a dull gray. Sounds were growing fainter, stretching distantly, and Frank realized belatedly that he was breathing unevenly, starting to hyperventilate. He held his breath. Drake was leaning off the blanket, pulling up blades of grass and shredding each one into strips while Frank just sat there, not breathing, not moving. Waiting.

“I cant—I mean, I just don’t get it, dad. You’re like—the two of you, you go to bed together and you—”

“Drake,” he interrupted, covering his face with his hands, hiding; peeking out through the weave of his fingers, “I’m trying to tell you about the relationship, not my sex life.” That water was far too deep for him to manage at the moment, but at the mention of the ‘s’ word he caught his son’s full, shocked, disbelieving attention. “I’m sorry,” he muttered from behind his hands, “But coming out’s a new thing for me.”

“Coming…out….”

Funny, how after Drake had bandied ‘bisexual’ and ‘fag’ around the grass like baseball scores, that it was ‘coming out’ that was the one giant step past anywhere he was willing to go. He was up and running before Frank could withdraw the words, or dilute them with ambiguities. Frank emptied his lungs, watching his son’s all-out sprint across the green, green grass and knowing he couldn’t keep up the pace for long. He’d burn off the nervous energy and then he’d probably walk for awhile, just as he almost always had when the stress grew too great. In times past, Drake had eventually shown up at the car. In light of the revelation and now that he was old enough to find his own ride, Frank wasn’t so sure he’d be back. But there was no place else to wait and damned little else Frank could do, so he turned a pale eye on the shredded remains of the burger bag with its untouched food inside, drew the diet Coke out of the tray beside it and piled everything else in the nearest available trashcan. Folding the blanket, he returned to the parking lot and Jenny’s car, to do what he did best and hated most.

Frank sat, legs tucked under himself and feeling too conspicuous for words, on the sun-warmed hood of Jenny’s car. Every so often, he would drop a leg over the side and kick at a tire, marking the time, relieving muscles that were cramping with tension. Drake would come back if for no other reason than to yell at him, Frank was sure of it.

He was sweating in the bright sunlight by the time he spotted his son across expanse of park, moving back over the grass in that reluctant slouch of the young. True to form, it had taken Drake less than half an hour to reappear. But his son sure as hell didn’t look reconciled, or even approachable. He just looked unhappy.

Every so often, Drake would glance up from the ground, adjust his vaguely straight line toward the parking lot and Frank, then stare back down at his slow, shuffling feet. Frank slid off the hood of the Mercedes as Drake finally drew near, meeting the angry eyes with as much calm and compassion as he could muster.

“I knew you’d be waiting,” Drake grumbled, and Frank wasn’t sure if he was irritated or relieved.

“Yeah. I wasn’t gonna leave you in the lurch—”

“What about mom?” Drake cut in viciously, his voice filled to overflowing with unspoken accusation.

“What about her?” He wasn’t sure what his son wanted to hear, wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say.

“Why did you stay with her all those years? If you were gay?”

The word made a tiny part of him cringe, but at least they were talking. At least Drake was still here. “I stayed with her because I loved her, because I wanted to grow old with her and watch you grow up with her.” Drake made a noise of disbelief that stoppered his words for a second, and he tried without success to struggle around it. 

“Dad, don’t lie to me. Tell me or don’t tell me, but don’t lie to me.” The words were so familiar to Frank that he felt a sense of déjà vu. They were his words, used so many times over the course of years that Drake had adopted them, and the attitude behind them, as his own. An old memory of the years-long wasteland between Frank and his own father wafted chill and acrid across his mind. Anything, Frank would do anything he could to keep that from happening. But it wasn’t his decision anymore. He had, in five stupid minutes, given Drake all the ammunition he would need to kill off any chance of a good relationship between them. Interactive suicide.

“I’m not lying, Drake,” he blurted, terrified of the colossal mistake he had made in telling his son this particular truth. “I want you to understand, I was completely, passionately in love with your mom when she and I got married. I still loved her when she kicked me out, and I tried my damnedest to make it work. You know that.”

“Did she know you were gay?”

“No, she didn’t know and no, I never cheated on her,” he answered the unasked question, knowing it was the more important one, and one Drake would never ask, “not with women or men.” A very small lie, for a very small aberration; one he was willing to live with because he knew that the truth just wasn’t worth the pain. “Ever.”

A pack of kids erupted from a car close by, yelling and laughing, startling Drake and distracting his attention; bright colors and bright faces chased each other away from the parking lot and across the grass. They were so…normal. So out of reach.

“I told her a couple of years ago that Vince and I had gotten together,” he offered, wanting Drake to have as much information as he could stand. “It was right after the divorce settlement, and I guess I was mad at her.”

Frank watched a variety of emotions play across his son’s face, watched the outraged child waging war on youthful maturity. Watched especially, as the new pieces fell into place with the others. “A couple…years?” Drake managed. It wasn’t all anger; his son was shocked to his shorts and didn’t know which way to turn, asking questions just to keep his thoughts from spinning, probably. “How long have you two been…uh, together.”

Frank found a gentle smile for his son’s embarrassment, and felt a new surge of paternal pride at how well he was trying to deal with this. “You remember that psycho case who came to the house, looking for me? Sid Royce?”

“Mom said you killed him.”

It was a shock, to hear the words just spill out like that, so casually, as if he killed people every day. It was also a truth that he couldn’t deny. “Yeah, the man I took out. That was the nail in the coffin for Jenny, and maybe for me, too. Vince helped me pick up the pieces.”

“Oh.”

Drake didn’t know what to do, and Frank knew that feeling well. It was out now, and between them; best not to push too hard, best to let it come out as it would. “Listen, you wanna go somewhere? Do anything?”

“No,” he replied absently. “Not really.”

He watched his boy fighting, and it tore him up inside. He hated being the one to throw another spanner in the works of Drake’s young life, and it was just as bad to consider the damage to the relationship they had finally begun to nurture. But there just wasn’t any way to put this off. “Son? What do you want?”

“I dunno. Can we just go back to your house? Maybe talk for a little while?”

Impulse brought his hand up, and sudden nerves brought it right back down. Best not to touch him, best to give him some room from daddy the fag until he got used to the idea, until it wasn’t so personal for him. “I think that’s a great idea.” More than he’d hoped for, and exactly what Vince had predicted. Damn him.

“Okay. I’ll follow you.”

•••

Frank wondered when the questions would start. It was almost five, and Drake hadn’t opened his mouth at all since they’d settled down in the living room. The packing boxes had startled him, Frank knew, but there was damned little to do about it. He had to clear this place out by mid-week because the job was gonna take him out of town through next weekend. The fact that Drake was still here at all had to be a good sign. It had to be. Drake didn’t want to just pull out of it, he wanted answers to his questions. The problem was, the kid just kept looking at him and looking away, looking again and looking away, and it was hard to be good old, faithful, dependable and moral dad in the face of the overt stares. It was hard to just sit, and not try to second-guess Drake, or start talking just to hear his voice. But he couldn’t afford to rush him, not now. And so, like any good nineties parent, he resorted to the television and watched an old movie in silence, occasionally glancing over to discern when the questions would begin.

When they finally started, and kept coming, he wondered when they would stop. They covered a broad spectrum, from the anticipated naïve to the embarrassingly personal, all asked in a diffident, I-don’t-really-care tone that only a teenager could master; by the time a guy hit twenty-one, he usually got a taste of the real world and lost his edge.

“You’re really gonna like, live in his house with him?”

“Nah, he’s selling the place in Brooklyn. We bought a condo in Baltimore. Less maintenance, less hassle from his old neighborhood pals. There’s a pool, tennis courts…” he offered, and trailed off, embarrassed.

“Sounds cool,” Drake returned feebly, and then more silence, until he mustered up the nerve for the next question.

“How did you get to be…I mean, how did you figure out you were, you know, into guys?”

And already, Frank wished Vince were here to field this kind of question; he was out of his depth, and smart enough to know it. “I don’t know what to tell you. How did you know you were into girls?”

“Dad!”

“Sorry. I guess it’s the same thing, though. I mean, you think girls are sexy, and I….” This seemed to be his day for not completing a single sentence.

“You think guys are sexy?” That’s gross echoed between the words, and this time Frank had to smile.

“Yeah, I do.”

More silence. “So Vinnie really turns you on, huh?” he asked, as if he were asking the time.

“Yeah, Vinnie really turns me on, and you’re embarrassin’ the hell out of me,” he chuckled. He held up a hand. “No, it’s okay. I’m just rememberin’ the day you and I had our first talk about girls and sex. I felt a lot safer when the questions were about you.”

“Well, so did I,” drake replied with blunt honesty. “This—this is weird, Dad. Really weird. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, what I’m supposed to say. Part of me still thinks it’s some kinda joke, you know?”

Frank sobered up fast. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t expect it to be easy, I just didn’t want to keep lying to you. If it’s any consolation, it’s not easy for me either.”

“You mean, you and Vinnie—”

“No, that part’s fine. We’ve got a good relationship,” Drake blanched and Frank backpedalled, “a good friendship. I meant me tellin’ you this.”

“Why?”

Why? “Because I didn’t know how you’d take it. I still don’t know how you’re gonna take it, sport, after the excitement’s all over. You don’t even know how you’re takin’ it right now. And I love you so much that I’m scared of doin’ the wrong thing, of saying the wrong thing.” He thought suddenly of Drake’s earlier concern: is it Vinnie? Is something wrong with Vinnie? Drake practically hero-worshipped Vince, had since the first time they had met and Vince didn’t treat him like a kid. One of the first places Drake had gone after he’d gotten his driver’s license was to Brooklyn, to show Vince and take him for a ride. He wondered how tarnished that image would be when the dust settled down.

Just tell him the truth, he had heard Vinnie’s voice echo in his mind. He’s seventeen years old now; he can take the truth from you, Frank. Well, sometimes the Italian Stallion was wrong. Sometimes, he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And Frank couldn’t squelch the sinking premonition that this had been one of those times.

He looked, really looked at his son; Drake was practically a man now, and Frank didn’t know when that had happened. “I want you to know, kiddo, that I love you with all my heart. No matter what happens, no matter what you decide you need to do about this, I always have and I always will.”

His assertion fostered more silence, more teenage introspection, and Frank’s nerves felt like they were being abraded with sandpaper. He got up quietly and turned off the TV, opting instead for a little Beethoven to calm him down, and ducked down the hall to the temporary privacy of the bathroom. He figured he had about five minutes to himself, and he stayed there, sitting on the closed toilet lid with his head propped against his open hands, feeling a wealth of emotion he didn’t want to know. 

He was numb; he was relieved. He was so much in love with Vince that his chest ached, and so afraid of his son’s alienation that he felt like a teenager himself—all overload and confusion, anticipation about the distant future and fear of the next moment. He remembered, in bone-deep, full, living color, the first time he’d talked to Jenny’s dad after he had proposed to her. It felt a lot like this moment.

The music drifting down the hallway stopped abruptly, and he jerked his head up, feeling the tension crackle down his spine. Time for round two. He padded out to the living room.

“What happened to my music?” he asked of Drake, who was sitting silent on the couch, fiddling with a rolled-up racing magazine of Vinnie’s.

“I killed it.”

Drake had practically been raised on classics; he usually liked them. 

And then Drake looked at him. “Dad?”

“Yeah?” he asked, feeling the tightening in his gut. Now it was gonna get personal. He wished Vinnie were here.

Drake chewed on his lip, obviously searching for words. “Do you like doing what you and Vinnie do? Having...sex with him?”

“I like making love with him,” he gently corrected, wanting very much to set a good example and avoid the whole issue at the same time. He felt too naked for this conversation, too exposed…. “Hang on a minute,” he muttered, looking down at the floor, his eyes straying guiltily to the place in front of the armchair where he’d liked it a whole helluva lot, and where it had had very little to do with love. “I’ll be right back.”

Getting up off the couch, Frank prowled silently into the matchbox-sized ‘spare bedroom’, now the junk room that collected everything he had no other place for. He had seen it just yesterday while he was sifting through memories; still complete, still in its box. He took it up, cradling it in his arms like a child, and carried it back out to the living room, dumping it on the coffee table and unpacking the game. “You remember when you gave me this, for safekeeping?” he asked, pulling the TV out just enough to plug it in, turning the channel to “3” and attaching the joystick. There were three game cartridges, and he snatched up the nearest one, sticking it into the slot. “The week she threw me out,” he elaborated. “She was on some kick about you not watching TV.” He pushed the setup button and watched the monitor go from static to flat blue. “I got pretty good at this, you know.”

He looked up then, and right into his son’s flat stare. It asked, very politely, what the hell he thought he was doing. And Frank didn’t have an answer. Sitting back on his heels, he noticed the faint trembling in his hand, the way the game controls wavered ever so slightly, and thought about what he really wanted to tell his son, about what he really wanted Drake to understand. “I’m messing this up, aren’t I?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Silence greeted him, affirming the fact.

The joystick thudded and bounced onto the coffee table as Frank abandoned the futile attempt to rebuild lost rapport. He looked around at the stacks of boxes, at the house that had, with Vinnie’s almost constant presence these last weeks, nearly become a home. It was nothing by comparison to the comfort and security of the life he was about to set out on with his lover; a life he trusted, a life he was looking forward to instead of dreading. But god he hoped that his relationship with his son wasn’t the price he would pay.

Honesty in the form of Vinnie’s voice in his head steered his course with Drake: He’s your son Frank, don’t you think it’s time to let him learn who his dad is? He’ll do whatever he’s gonna do, but at least he’ll have the truth from you. Sliding back across the carpet, he pushed himself up and into the recliner, throwing a leg over its arm. 

Drake looked so…mature. Where in hell had the child gone, the one who fell off his bike and cried, the one who was so bright in school, so eager to please, so eager to gain his father’s approval—where had that child gone? “Sometimes,” he began quietly, confronting the fear head-on and answering the question he had wanted so much to avoid, “it’s the most intimate, loving thing I think two people are capable of, and sometimes it’s just blowing off steam. Sometimes it’s just for fun, because it feels good—you know?” He shrugged and offered a tiny smile. “Mostly it’s love, because it’s the simplest way to express how I feel about him, and how he feels about me. But no,” he admitted, “it’s not love all the time. And yeah, I enjoy it. All the time.”

He watched his son’s struggle with an ache in his chest. He wished to hell the world was different. He wished that Drake didn’t have to go through this. He wished he didn’t have to go through it. Eventually Drake pursed his lips and looked up, meeting Frank’s eyes. “I just don’t get it,” he offered timidly. “I don’t understand. How could you—how could you be with Mom all this time. I mean, I know how it was with you guys, but you loved each other. I thought for sure you did.”

Frank sighed deeply, wondering if there was any way at all to say it so that a seventeen year old boy would understand. “I didn’t lie to you before, Drake. I did love her. I always did, and when I ignore the crap between your mom and me these last few years, then I still love her.”

“But you’re with a guy, Dad. It isn’t the same, you can’t....”

“Yeah, I can. I know it’s hard to understand, but I sure can. I love Vinnie and I pray to god that it’s for keeps this time.”

A fine, small hand came up to brush too-long hair back and away from a pale, wide, sweating forehead. Frank wondered, not for the first time, if his son really might be in shock. Drake dropped his head against the back of the couch, everything about him looking defeated. It was a pose Frank knew in every cell, and he wanted to tell his son not to worry, that the feeling was only temporary. But he had never been able to convince himself of that.

“Every time I close my eyes,” Drake whispered, “I see you...I see you and Vinnie, you know? I don’t want to, it makes me sick to think of it—”

“It isn’t sick, Drake. You think I’d be involved in it if it were sick?” he asked, playing on his son’s image of him.

“No,” he said, petulant, “but it is sick and I still don’t understand.”

The key rattling in the door startled them both.

“Frank?” Vince called out, and Frank heard the door open, then slam shut.

“In here,” he called, jumping up to go and meet Vinnie by the door. “Don’t be so obvious, for God’s sake!” he grated through clenched teeth.

“What?”

“You could ring the bell like everybody else.” He knew he was being paranoid, but that didn’t make it any easier.

Vinnie rolled his eyes and Frank steeled himself for the ‘don’t be ridiculous’ lecture, but it didn’t arrive. His lover said only, “I’ve always been lettin’ myself in. Don’t be such a whiner.”

Frank wiped anxious sweat away with the back of his hand. “My kid’s in there getting ready for his first nervous breakdown, and you call it whining. What did I do to deserve this?” He tried to dodge the close, intimidatingly certain stare from his lover and, as always, failed miserably.

“You sure it isn’t you havin’ the breakdown?” Vince asked, sliding past Frank and barreling into the living room. “Hiya Drake, how you doin’?”

Vince seemed wholly oblivious to the rapidly rising tension in the room, breezing in and throwing his jacket over the back of the couch like it was any other day, any other normal fucking day. Vince flatly refused to be ashamed of who he really was, and while one part of Frank cringed, the greater part loved him for it.

Drake surprised him by turning openly, aggressively hostile for the very first time. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Oh, shit. Frank understood, suddenly, why the fragile, careful demeanor had been displayed all afternoon; no matter what Drake said, it had still been abstract, just a taxing mental ghost like bad dreams or a particularly effective horror film. Vinnie in the room—Vinnie in the room with Frank—made it real.

“I came over for dinner, and,” he brandished a plastic bag from Erol’s Videos, “I brought movies. I’ve got the latest and the greatest, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” Vince ignored the anger rolling off of Drake in swamping waves, and Frank proffered a silent round of applause. Stay cool, act like it was normal and pray that the kid picked up on the vibes...as Vince would say.

As Drake visibly bristled, Frank leaned against the doorway, knowing that it wasn’t going to work this time.

“Dad, if he’s staying then I’m going,” Drake snapped, his eyes never leaving Vinnie.

Frank, in his own little world of delirium, wasn’t so far gone that he missed Vinnie slowing down and focussing in. Vince was adapting to the scenario, shifting gears on the fly and playing his mark like a champion. Jesus he was good at what he did.

“Hey Drake, come on,” Vinnie cajoled. “I never made a secret of how much I loved your dad. I told you that right off, from the very beginning.”

“Yeah, right. You told me you cared about him, you told me you loved him,” Drake spat, all vitriol and aggression. “You didn’t tell me you were—that you were fucking him!” Frank wondered if he could just impress himself through the wall and get the hell away from this, or whether there was some part of his soul that he could sell in exchange for the erasure of this day. Almost any price would be worth paying.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you, you check your manners at the door or somethin’?” Vince said.

“It’s sick,” Drake growled, facing Vinnie off like David in front of Goliath, pugnacious, thrusting out his jaw and balling his fists.

“No, it’s not sick and maybe you oughtta keep your mouth shut and use your brain for a little while, instead of passing judgement on things you don’t understand.”

“Oh I understand all right,” he yelled. “I understand exactly what you do to him, and it’s sick! I’m getting out of here.”

Frank could do nothing but watch as his stomach soured with his son’s words, and his worst nightmare played itself out in front of his eyes; but Vince salvaged the moment with simple force, grabbing Drake’s arm and stopping him in his tracks. Vince seemed more startled than Frank was when Drake started swinging. “Hey, hey, cut it the hell out,” Vince yelled, dragging him into a bear hug and holding on tight, his greater weight making a joke of Drake’s struggles.

“Get your fucking perverted hands off me!” Drake screamed, thrashing around in Vince’s arms. “Don’t you touch me, let me go!”

“Stop it, damn it, right now, and listen to me for a minute. Stop trying to act like some punk off the street.”

It took a minute—a very long one, during which Frank knew he should be stepping in, giving his son his freedom and stomping on Vinnie’s determination to win a lost cause, for Drake to slow down. But Frank held off, letting Vince play his hand because he couldn’t think of anything better, and because he didn’t want to see his son run out that front door.

Drake stilled in Vince’s grasp, breathing hard. “Let go of me,” he muttered. He was furious, but he was listening. Vince released him and backed off all of four inches.

“I’ve been straight with you,” Vince accused, shaking a finger in Drake’s face. “I’ve given you all the room in the world for years, let you do stuff your folks would have heart attacks if they knew about—” Frank definitely wanted to talk to Vinnie alone— “I’ve stood by you and taken care of you, listened to your problems and been your friend no matter what went down. I think you owe me half an hour.”

Frank watched the battle of wills and knew long before Drake did who would win it. Vince could convince a nun to run a prostitution ring, if he set his mind to it. “Okay then,” Drake sullenly challenged, “what do you want to say?”

“Good. That’s better. But what I’ve got to say is just between you and me. Siddown.” Vinnie turned on Frank, then, rushing him so quickly he was startled to receive the attention, and he stood away from the doorframe, bracing himself for anything. “Frank, how about makin’ a run to McDonald’s and pickin’ up some burgers?”

Frank’s gaze shifted from his committed lover to his angry son, and he shook his head. It was insane to even think of giving Vince a long leash where Drake was concerned, but he distantly heard a voice he’d have sworn under oath was his own saying, “Yeah, okay.”

Vince pulled out his wallet, offering up a twenty and jangling his car keys. “Get me a Big Mac and a large fry, okay? I missed lunch.”

Frank just glared. “Didn’t we all?” he replied, sotto voce, before irritation took over. “Anything else while I’m out? Maybe I can drop off your dry cleaning for you?”

“Milkshake?” Vinnie smiled, raising a hand, and Frank spurred himself into action, arresting the approaching caress by grabbing his lover’s wrist.

“Cut it out,” he growled under his breath, casting on Vince a hard, dangerous glare.

But Vinnie shook his head, his face open and conveying a love that was depthless and unending. “He’s not a kid anymore, he’s got to know,” he said in a normal voice, one that Drake was sure to hear. And Vince turned their joined hands, kissing the back of Frank’s. The tender gesture was stirring as it always had been, but it was nothing in the face of his son’s chilling stare just over Vinnie’s left shoulder. Gently he extricated his hand, and snatched the bill and the keys in retribution.

“I’ll be back in a little while. Drake, if you’re not here I’ll understand. Just don’t forget I love you.”

Vince glared disapproval as he stepped back to give Frank room to move. “He’ll be here, Frank. Geez.”

“Yeah well, don’t kill each other.”

As he grabbed his coat from the hall closet, he heard his lover’s dulcet tones floating from the living room: “Okay Drake, let’s cut through the crap and get down to it, huh?” and wondered if there’d be pieces left to pick up when he returned.

Frank took Vinnie’s Barracuda around the corner of the block with careful precision, knuckles white from a death-grip on the steering wheel; keep control of the car, keep control of his life. If it were just that simple.... He felt instead like a kid being sent to his room so his parents could fight—but he was the parent here, and he had no idea why he’d let Vince get rid of him. Wrong, he admitted to himself. You wanted out of there. 

So he was a coward where his son was concerned. So what?Better men than he didn’t know how to deal with their kids. He settled back and slowed down, trusting in his gut that in this situation, Vince could handle Drake better than he could, and settled back to endure the ride.

He gave them their full half-hour, circling the block a couple of times in wide relief when he saw his ex’s car still parked on the street in front of his house. He couldn’t delay any longer; the french fries were probably reverting to their natural state of oil-based imitation plastic, so he pulled into the drive and squared his shoulders, preparing himself to confront the remains.

“Okay,” he yelled, forcing a normal tone and pushing the door open, “junk food for everybody.” Drake was in the recliner Frank had vacated, and Vince was sprawled along the couch. Indiana Jones was just sneaking out his office window. Taking in the quaint, homey domesticity, Frank wondered why he bothered doing anything himself. But he knew why he bothered; this was as much a facade of calm as the games he sent Vinnie into on the job, as the games he had played himself.

“Great,” Vinnie said, sitting up. “I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving. Drake? How about you?” He dumped burgers out on the coffee table and all of the french fries into the empty bag.

“Yeah, okay.” But he was still subdued, eyes downcast and mouth pursed in a tight frown.

Vince hadn’t managed to charm all the trouble away; he’d just diverted the explosion.

Vince had slid to the floor by the food; Frank followed at a more sedate pace, opening his cheeseburger and wedging himself onto the couch between the arm and Vinnie’s shoulder.

Drake tried to eat. Frank gave him credit for that. For himself, he was finally relaxing with all of this. Frank still wasn’t sure what his son was going to do, and he knew that it was going to get even worse, after the shock had worn off. But from here on out there was nothing he could do about it. He was burning to know what had gone on between Vince and Drake, but he couldn’t do anything about that either, and the conditioning of endless years of detective work was settling over him. When the game was prepped and set rolling, all the player could do was sit back and see what turned out.

He even found himself watching the movie. At one point, he felt Drake’s eyes on him and looked up, caught between curiosity and confusion. Drake’s affronted gaze dropped down and Frank followed it, realizing with a start that Vinnie’s head was resting in its usual place against his thigh, and his hand was enmeshed in the thick, silky hair. 

“I thought Vince was the one who would slip,” he offered feebly. 

Drake just looked away toward the window and the street beyond, every move displaying deep embarrassment and a deeper anger. Frank knew, with a near-overwhelming sense of loss, that his son wouldn’t be here much longer. The urge to bolt was strong in Frank McPike’s genes, no thanks to his father, and he recognized all the signs. Frank just stared at his son, memorizing every detail; every curve and twist of anger in his face, every flashing, heated look, every restless flight of his fingers, wondering if he’d see them again. When, Vinnie would have said. But he wasn’t Vinnie, never had been and never aspired to be. If suited his sense of perspective better. If was safer.

Drake’s muscles were growing rigid with tension, his breath coming fast and hard like a runner on the blocks. Vinnie’s eyes were on Frank, and he felt a hand brush against his ankle but couldn’t spare it the attention it solicited. He was waiting, counting the last minutes, the seconds—

Leashed energy burst and Drake jumped to his feet, rubbing at his face in a way so familiar it was haunting. Like father, like son, and all the way down the line. “Look, I’m just gonna go home early, okay?” he said. “I need to think.”

“Hey,” Vince said, sounding wounded and indignant, “I thought we made a deal.”

Frank silenced him with a restraining squeeze to his shoulder. “No, Vince, it’s okay.” To Drake he said quietly, “Take all the time you want. Just remember, no matter what you decide, I love you. I always will.”

“Yeah.” Drake looked from him to Vince, and the betrayed hurt on his son’s face was so much like the vision in Frank’s nightmares that he felt his stomach knotting, and bile rose in his throat. “Right.”

Frank levered himself up using Vince’s shoulder as a crutch, and followed Drake to the door. There was nothing to be done, nothing left to be said. He stood in the open doorway, feeling the cool, wet night air reach for him through the screen and watching Jenny’s car tear off down the street. He couldn’t even find a reprimand in himself for the broken speed limit.

Warmth at his back warded off the chill, and Vinnie’s arm around his shoulder steered him back down the hall. He sat down hard in the armchair Drake had abandoned, his thoughts whirling incoherently, chasing each other around like raucous children at play. There was nothing that caught at him—no anger, no fear, no frustration. The feelings moved much too quickly to leave any impression behind.

The movie was still playing, Indy Jones surviving yet another stupid, crippling explosion with only a scratch and a little theater makeup, and even that, which usually elicited a scathing diatribe on reality and groans about suspension of belief from Vinnie, did nothing to break into his silent wake.

Vinnie. Vinnie was somewhere near, sitting quietly, refusing to intrude for the moment, and he knew he should be saying something, doing something to let Vince know that he was okay. But he didn’t know if he was okay, couldn’t recognize the shock inside him.

Drake was gone.

“Frank?” he heard, from somewhere at the end of a long, dark tunnel of pain. “Frank?” Then Vinnie’s voice was the only sound; Indiana Jones, who had thus far survived explosions, flash-fires, airplane crashes and rappelling in the rain, was finally murdered by the remote control.

Frank’s teeth hurt from the grinding, his chest ached like he’d been underwater forever and the surface was just a few seconds too far away for him to reach. “Don’t shut me out, Frank,” he heard, closer this time, slipping like a dormouse under Frank’s defensive wall. “Look at me.”

Vinnie was kneeling right in front of him, straightforward concern and worried love painted over his face just like Indy’s theater makeup, and reason flowed back suddenly, like cool, chill water over his soul.

“I can’t believe the nerve of that kid, after everything we’ve put up with from him—” Vince was working up a real head of steam, trying to deflect the blame onto anyone or anything but Frank himself. Vince knew him, now. In the last year he had filled in all the missing gaps, closed all the spaces where Frank had been certain Vince would never understand, and Vince knew the struggling inadequacy he carried around with him. But there wasn’t anything Vinnie could say to absolve Frank of this guilt.

“We just pulled the carpet out from under him, Vinnie—he looked up to you, looked up to us both, I guess, and we dropped this little number in his lap. He’s got a right to be angry. I can’t blame him.”

“Yeah? Well I can.”

“You’re just not as forgiving as I am.”

“Frank,” Vince muttered in a long-suffering tone, “nobody’s as forgiving as you are. Damnit, if he’d just knock off with his prejudices and open his eyes, he’d be glad for you. You and I both know you’ve never been happier.”

“Well, he didn’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

They sat in silence for a long while, but that silence was no longer as oppressive.

Vinnie got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with two coffee mugs. The aroma they gave off was rich with chocolate and sticky-sweet with sugar. Frank winced and looked from the cup to Vince, still not quite recovered, and when his lover said “drink it,” he did.

“He’s not gonna do anything stupid, is he?” Vince asked, settling again on the end of the couch.

“Oh, thanks,” Frank replied drily. “That’s a real cheery thought.”

Vinnie pursed his lips. “Come on, you know what I mean. Maybe we oughtta call Jenny.”

Frank shuddered at the idea. “No. She’d be too smug about the whole thing, and I know she couldn’t resist reminding me whose fault all of this is.”

“Fine,” Vince grumbled, “I’ll call her. Let the bitch try it with me and we’ll see who comes out on top.”

Frank knew he should have stopped him. He knew he ought to call, himself, to let Jenny know that Drake should be on his way, and to keep an eye out for him. But he didn’t. He just sat there and watched his lover at the reins of his life.

“Jenny? It’s Vince,” Vince said into the phone, and the saccharin warmth of his voice was almost enough to make Frank smile. Then Vince rolled his eyes. “Vince Terranova.” Can you believe this? he mouthed to Frank. “Listen, Jenny, Drake managed to stick it out for most of the afternoon, but he bolted a little while ago.” A short pause ensued, and Frank didn’t even want to imagine what she was saying. “No, I came by this evening. Well, not that it’s any of your business—” and by now the sweetness had soured, turning hostile, “—but Frank’s just fine. Listen, Frank wants you to keep an eye out for him. And do me a favor, huh? Give us a call when he gets home.

“Yeah, right. Bye.”

Vince gently cradled the receiver, then looked up with a benign, almost-calm expression. “I really, really hate that woman,” he said.

With that bitchy pronouncement from Vince, Frank realized that there was still the odd nice thing to look forward to in his life, even after this. 

“Who’d have guessed?”

He brought his feet up in the chair, wrapping his arms around his shins to nurture the tiny bit of warmth left inside him and propping his chin on his knees. “So what did you say to him when I slipped out to play waiter with that gourmet banquet?”

Vince waved off the question, and closer scrutiny revealed his lover’s discomfort. “All right, Vinnie, spill it. What did you threaten him with? And while we’re at it, what did you have to threaten him with?”

“Come on, Frank,” Vinnie said, holding his coffee mug to his mouth and letting the steam rise up in his face, “it’s personal.”

“Personal? Ah, Vince, you’ll excuse me for pointing out that it’s my son we’re talkin’ about here.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he sighed. “It’s just that stuff like that isn’t really what’s important. Not right now.” Vince looked introspective. It wasn’t the familiar patina of old memories or nostalgia, but a very present-tense preoccupation.

He screwed up his courage and asked the obvious question. “So what’s important, then?”

“Huh?—oh. I was just thinkin’ about what he was sayin’, earlier. Real weird.”

Frank took a deep breath and pursed his lips for a moment, wondering just how weird…. There was nothing Vince could say that could possibly make this day any worse; anything at all was downhill form here. “Okay, sport, you’ve got two minutes free from judgement. What happened?”

Vince pushed his hair back in a nervous reflex, looking for a moment like a juvenile delinquent in front of a conservative judge. “I dunno exactly. Drake’s got some pretty weird ideas about what bisexuality’s all about, and some pretty tough stereotypes to get over.”

“Like what?”

“He thought you were—there’s no easy way to put this,” he said, searching for words, “but he thought you were playing, well, the wife.”

“What?”

“You know, that you were the submissive partner. I guess because you’re a small guy next to me.”

Frank paled, not at the words nor even the several implications that came to mind, but at his sudden and nightmarish image of Vince and Drake, calmly discussing what he did in bed. “What in God’s name did you tell him?” he demanded when he found his voice.

“He kept up with the sick thing, about ‘what you’re doin’ to my dad’. He’s real preoccupied with the mechanics, but what can I say? Any teenager would concentrate on that first, I guess. I told him he had it wrong, that you did the fucking a hell of a lot more often than I did, and that fucking wasn’t the end-all to gay sex anyway.”

Frank felt the blood rush into his cheeks, and even more quickly drain back out of his head. He hugged his knees tighter, holding the distant trembling at bay. Vinnie looked at him and must have seen something important, because he shifted nervously on the couch. “Well, it isn’t,” he defended uncertainly.

“He’s just barely seventeen, Vince,” Frank pleaded. “He’s too impressionable for this kind of conversation.”

“Frank, he’s heard it all before. This is the nineties, after all.”

“Yeah well, hearing it in the abstract and having the maturity to digest this with respect to you and me are two different things entirely.” He shook his head decisively. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

Vince cast a dry, blue-eyed look of disgust his way. “Thanks for the input, two hours too late.”

“If you’d asked me first, I’d have told you then, too.”

“Well, it’s done,” Vince dismissed it. “And for what it’s worth, I think bein’ straight with him was the right thing.”

“Then why isn’t he still here?” he snapped, feeling the icy whiplash of anger cracking through him. Just as suddenly it left him, weak and afraid. “Sorry.”

His lover frowned and shook his head. “It’s okay. I figured I’d have to deal with a little of this. I love you anyway.” Vince changed the subject by the simple act of getting up off the couch and moving to tower over Frank, forcing Frank to abandon his fetal crouch and lean back in his chair. Vince drew closer, leaning over him and blotting out the overhead light completely, and planted a warm, plying kiss on Frank’s mouth. “I’m lookin’ forward to livin’ with you, Francis.”

From somewhere, Frank found an answering smile and licked his lips. “Yeah, me too.” And that, at least, was the one truth he was sure of.

•••

Thick with humidity and thunderstorms blowing up overland from the southwest, blasted by tropical storms from the ocean, the air was definitely filled to overflowing with a D.C. summer. And this particular summer, Frank McPike was a contented man.

Vince liked to drag him out onto the covered patio during the worst of the storms, where they would cuddle up under an old wool army blanket and watch the rain sheeting down. Unnaturally fascinated by violent weather, Vince would go on and on about how beautiful it was, how powerful, while Frank just snuggled closer to his lover, leeching off his warmth and his excitement, and let him do it.

No matter what the weather, Vince liked to celebrate at the drop of a hat: their first night, their first week; first month; six months. Christmas had been copiously extravagant, with a tree that brushed the top of the living room’s vaulted ceiling, and wreaths, garlands and streamers hung from every available outcropping: shelves, picture frames, light fixtures. Frank’s mouth was raw by New Year’s, when the mistletoe finally came down, and his heart was full. There had been only the one thing, only Drake’s conspicuous absence, to dampen his enjoyment of their First Christmas.

Valentine’s Day had been positively embarrassing.

Drake’s continued neglect was the only dark cloud over the last year in general, and Frank had guiltily come to the conclusion that maybe his son’s estrangement was a price he could bear, after all. As long as he didn’t think about it too closely.

He and Vince were coming up on the First Anniversary Living Together, with reservations made three weeks past at the Jockey Club for next Friday, and the rest of the weekend in the tiny township of Nag’s Head on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, if Tropical Storm Edward blew himself out by then. He sipped at his morning coffee in the breakfast nook, glancing around himself to appreciate, yet again, the raw woods and pale beige tiles. He loved this home. 

Laughing at his own sentimentality, Frank admitted to the empty room that he was looking forward to the weekend and feeling…happy.

The telephone rang and he checked his watch, surprised. It was too early in the morning for social chats, but that never stopped him from answering, so he dragged himself up out of the chair and hooked the receiver to beat the answering machine. “Hello.”

The silence lasted long enough for him to give the caller the obligatory prompt before slamming down the receiver. “Hello?”

“Dad?” It was Drake, and his heart skipped a couple of beats. It had been so damned long since he’d heard his son’s voice.

“Drake? Hiya,” he said. “Uh, how are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah? Great. How are things?”

“Fine.”

“School going okay?” he asked softly, calling himself ten kinds of a jerk for not managing better conversation than this.

“Everything’s okay, I guess. Listen, Dad….”

“I’m all ears.” He waited out the long silence, so glad to just hear from the kid that the obvious discomfort didn’t seem important at all.

“Well, I’ve been thinking, you know, about you and Vinnie,” Drake offered diffidently.

“Yeah?” he said, refusing to jump to conclusions. This could be a bitch session as easily as a reconciliation.

“Yeah. And I guess I’ve been being a real jerk about everything.”

“Hey, no you haven’t. It’s not like this is the most normal thing in the world for you to have to deal with.”

“Stop forgiving me, Dad,” Drake snapped, irritable, and Frank smiled to himself. “You’re always letting me off the hook and the truth is, I acted like a jerk.”

“Okay,” he said carefully, “you’ve been actin’ like a jerk. Sorry kiddo, but I do understand.”

“Well, I’m glad one of us did. It, uh, it wasn’t just that it was you. I mean, it was Vinnie, too. It’s kind of a tough adjustment to make. You were always…well, you were always Dad, and Vinnie—I never thought that Vinnie might be…might be….”

“Not quite what you expected him to be?” he filled in tactfully.

“Yeah,” Drake said with a heavy sigh of relief, “exactly. Anyway, I wanted to say thanks for the stuff you guys sent over for Christmas. The computer’s great.”

“Yeah, well, I figured you could use a laptop when you get to college. Impress your friends and all that stuff.”

“Yeah. I’ve been playing with it. The games are pretty cool, and I’m writing papers for school on the word processor already. And I think I bought out the record store with the gift certificate….”

“Hey, only the best for my boy.” With some surprise he realized that he felt weak with relief, that he was leaning against the wall and that it was the only thing keeping him on his feet. “I love you, Drake,” he managed in a level voice.

“I know, Dad. I love you, too.”

He didn’t know what else to say. He just leaned there, listening to the silence on the line and feeling so absurdly relieved that he couldn’t think of a single thing.

He waited, feeling an inane smile spread over his face, for whatever else it was his son had called to say. Vince chose that moment to pass by the kitchen and Frank held out a hand. Drake, he mouthed, pointing at the phone. Vince rushed over, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, conveying silent support and a smiling I told you so grin that Frank appreciated more than he could say. Vinnie pressed his ear against the edge of the receiver.

“Listen Dad, about you and Vinnie.”

“Yeah?”

“I still don’t really get it or anything. But it’s your life, and it’s okay by me if you wanna live it this way. Okay?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled, happy. It was fantastic, it was spectacular, it was better than anything he had ever expected. “Okay.”

“So, my birthday’s next Saturday. Eighteen and everything. I’d kinda like to spend part of the day with you, if you can make it.”

“You bet I can make it,” he said, casting a guilty look of apology Vince’s way. The romantic weekend was off, if Drake wanted him there. Very carefully, he probed his son’s resolve, wondering just how to go from here. “Was that me as in me, or me as in me and Vince?”

“Does it matter?” he asked timidly.

“It’s your decision, Drake.” He squeezed Vinnie’s hand at his shoulder, repentant, but Vinnie just smiled and shook his head. “All the way down the line; I promised you that, and Vince promised me.”

“Yeah,” his son finally said, “he can come too, if he wants.”

“He’ll want to. And Drake? Thanks.”

“Yeah Dad. But listen, huh? You guys won’t—well, you know, you won’t do anything obvious, will you? I really don’t wanna have to deal with that.”

Vince almost laughed and Frank swatted at his thigh, trying to glare. “Good behavior, Drake, I promise. No problem.”

“Okay then. It’s Saturday at three. Some friends are takin’ me out to the movies and stuff Saturday night, but I’m havin’ a party in the afternoon, too.”

Frank looked to Vinnie, who nodded with a grin. “We’ll be there.”

“Dad? Are you really happy?”

“Yeah Drake, I’m really happy,” he answered truthfully, and was rewarded by a blinding smile from his lover.

“Okay. Then I’m happy too. Bye Dad.”

“Bye.”

He hung up the phone and Vince raised an expectant eyebrow. “We have been invited to a birthday party,” Frank said. His smile stretched from ear to ear, much as he tried to stifle it. He was happy, damnit, very nearly exuberant.

“Great. Hey Frank, how about we buy him off?”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Well, he’s gonna be eighteen, and the stuff you were lookin’ at last week is…well,” Vinnie shrugged, “boring. He’ll be leaving for college in the fall, he could probably use a car. That is, if Jenny hasn’t gotten smart and beaten us to it.” Vince waggled his eyebrows and grinned.

“You’re kiddin’, right?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a great idea.” He tilted his head to one side, frowning a little as he thought hard. “What kind do you think he’d want?”

Vinnie shrugged. “I dunno. Somethin’ red.”

•••

Their third Christmas in Baltimore was fast approaching, and the novelty of new relationship had been left by the wayside some time past. In its place was peace, and comfort, and a sense of security that Frank imagined even Vinnie appreciated. He knew he did.

Times were a’changing, with life at the Office moving by faster than ever since the Bureaucratic Awakening—as Vinnie liked to call it. Frank’s first awareness of it was when he’d been ordered, point-blank and with an escort, directly to GW University Medical Center to have his blood drawn. Vince, apparently, had been met with the same orders and was there ahead of him. Only one test, only one cause; Frank had been terrified, not of the results which he already knew would be negative, but of the why. The organization was finally wise to them, or at least taking action, and was looking for something threatening, a way to can them. The Justice Department’s entire “Early Retirement with Full Benefits for AIDS & HIV Cases” program was already a civil service hallmark in misapplication of the law.

Vince was just laughing, elbow bent to hold the gauze pad in place over his punctured vein. “Jesus, Frank,” he whispered, grinning, “it’s been almost two years , and they only just got it! It’s pathetic!”

When the first month went by, and then the second, with nothing worse than pointed stares from supervisors whenever he and Vince entered a room together, or a car in front of their home that they’d seen more than once, Frank began to relax. Hell, he’d even begun to perversely enjoy the attention, a sure sign that Vince Terranova had gotten under his skin in a big, big way.

The End of their worries and, apparently, the investigation, had been when Paul Beckstead, under what Frank was absolutely sure was Vinnie’s tuition, had sent them that damned fruit basket, just before Thanksgiving.

And now it was almost Christmas. Weekends were spent doing whatever the hell they wanted, and this weekend it had been sitting together on the couch, watching television and groping each other shamelessly until nearly dawn…. 

The sound of someone moving noisily through the house brought Frank to the very edge of wakefulness. His dream and Vinnie’s warmth wrapped around him like an electric blanket beckoned him back toward sleep and warred with the years-ingrained wariness demanding that he wake up and deal with the intruder. He pushed himself up on his elbows before Vince’s arms tightened and shifted, pulling him back down.

“Vince,” he whispered groggily, trying to unravel himself from his lover, “somebody’s in the house....”

“I know. It’s Drake, he was crashed out on the couch at four AM when I got back up to turn out the lights,” Vinnie mumbled, and snuggled deeper into the bed. “Guess he couldn’t make it to the guest bedroom.”

“Drake? What’s he doin’ here so early? He wasn’t supposed to come in til this afternoon.” But Frank was settling back down as he asked the question, willing to wait for the answer until after he’d slept off the late-late show and the popcorn and the curiously inspired lovemaking of the early morning.

Then the banging on the bedroom door started and Drake stepped into the room, supremely unconcerned and precariously holding three cups of coffee. “Wake up,” he ordered, reminding Frank of those five-cent gum machine rubber balls of his childhood, bouncing off the walls, the ceiling, the furniture....

“Hey!” he yelled, “have some respect for the dead. It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s 8:30,” Drake replied, setting two of the coffee cups on the nightstand and returning with his own to the room’s only chair. “Come on, sleep later. You promised me a winter shopping extravaganza, and if I don’t get new clothes I gotta do laundry.”

Frank wanted to sleep. He really wanted to sleep. “Vince?” he began in his most manipulative voice, hoping he could pawn off responsibility for a couple of hours, “would you like to—”

“No,” Vince replied, in his most stubborn voice. “Not on your life.”

Frank had pulled away a little when Drake entered the room, and Vince resolutely dragged him back into a warm, devoted cuddle.

“Come on Dad, drink your coffee,” Drake prodded, “and Vinnie, get your hand off his butt or you’ll get him up in ways I don’t wanna think about.” 

Drake chuckled. 

Frank was mortified, but decided it was worth it when Vinnie, red-cheeked with embarrassment, subtly shifted to his own side of the bed.

Vince glared at Drake. “You got a smart mouth, you know that? What happened to the self-righteous little brat who didn’t wanna stay in the same room with me because I’d corrupted his sainted old man?”

Yeah, Frank thought with a satisfied giggle, definitely worth it. 

“While we’re on the subject,” Vince continued, irate, “What the hell happened to the shy and retiring miniature Frank that we packed off to Brown last fall?”

Drake sipped his coffee. “Why?”

“Because I want him back,” Vinnie said gruffly, tucking the blankets more securely around his waist. Vince turned on Frank then and demanded, “And what’re you laughing at?” but it only made Frank laugh harder. He collapsed against the pillows, seeing alternately his son’s indulgent smile or Vinnie’s embarrassed glower depending on which way he turned.

“I grew up, Vince,” Drake went on. “In fact, I score big points at school with you two—it’s not just anybody who’s cool enough to have a gay father.”

Frank’s laughter choked to a stop in his throat and outrage took its place. You’re tellin’ people?” he demanded, hearing his voice jump up two octaves.

“I go to all the gay rights rallies. Hey, I stick up for you.” He smiled conspiratorially. “They’re great places to pick up open-minded girls.”

“You what? They’re what?” he sputtered, outraged at the vision of Drake with a triangle pin on his jacket and spouting off to some pimply school newspaper reporter about his downtrodden Fed dad.

“Hey Frank, it’s the nineties,” Vince said smugly, and Frank noticed the “you got yours” smile plastered across his lover’s face. So he punched Vinnie on the arm.

“Whose side are you on?” 

Vince chuckled. “Mine. Gimme my coffee.”

Frank propped himself back on the pillows and handed over Vinnie’s coffee, all in a daze. The idea of his picture on a gay activism t-shirt wouldn’t leave his mind. Drake was serenely unaware, rattling on about classes and grades and girls until all the mugs were empty and Frank was over his own shock enough to contemplate going back to sleep.

“Okay,” Drake said, startling him by clapping his hands together, “get up and let’s go spend money.”

Frank did what he figured all fathers did; he succumbed to the inevitable. “You wanna give us some privacy then, and let us get dressed?” 

“Yeah sure.” Drake stood and gathered up the empty coffee mugs, stopping by the door and pointing a remonstrating finger at him. “But if you take longer than ten minutes to surface and I’m comin’ back. Be warned.”

Frank stared openmouthed at the closing door. “Where does he get that sarcastic streak?” he asked the room at large.

Vince laughed and his hand found its way under the covers to Frank’s belly. “Where the hell do you think he gets it? Look in a mirror sometime, Frank.”

He turned and cast a glare at his lover. “Bull. I was never like that.”

“Hah. You’re still like that. But I love ya anyway.” Vince nestled down against him, rubbing his groin against Frank’s hip, his hand making improper—but very welcome—suggestions along Frank’s thigh.

“Where do you get your energy?” he asked disbelievingly, his body responding to the caresses in spite of his brain which was trying to forcibly remind him that he was approaching fifty and old age and shouldn’t be able to keep up....

“Me?” Vince replied with blue-eyed innocence. “Leftovers from last night.” He gave Frank a soft peck on the mouth. “You’re very good, Mr. McPike.”

“Why thank you, Mr. Terranova,” he smiled warmly, “but unless you can do it in six minutes, you’d better give it up. Drake was serious. He’ll be back. So...” he let the sentence trail off, waiting for Vince to fill in the blank.

“So we lock the bathroom door and do it in the shower.”

“Gee, you’re smart too,” Frank said. Vince rose over him and kissed him, a hand slipping between his legs to nurture his growing erection—but the last twinges of embarrassment that Drake had left behind in the room wouldn’t fade, and parental guilt was too strong to overcome even for a lover’s touch. He seized Vinnie’s wrist, halting the action and tugging the hand away before it could make things any worse. “Raincheck?”

Vince groaned. “You’re really gonna do it, then? You’re really gonna leave me on simmer the whole goddamned day while we—” he shivered dramatically, “shop?”

“Yeah Vince,” he said cheerily, “I’m really gonna do it. Don’t think for a minute that that martyred act ever carried any weight with me, big guy.” He threw off the covers and kissed Vince once, in a tender place, before climbing out of bed to face what just might be a beautiful day. “I’m takin’ the shower first,” he declared, fishing clean underwear from his dresser drawer. “You go and entertain my son.”

But Vinnie followed him into the john and grabbed his robe from the hook on the wall, sliding it on without belting it. Instead of leaving, though, he just leaned in the doorway while Frank stood naked in front of the sink and brushed his teeth. A sidelong glance relieved his suspicions; Vinnie’s morning erection had faded, so he probably wasn’t really gonna be jumped in the shower. He spat and rinsed, and when he brought his head back up he caught Vinnie’s warm, tender look just over his shoulder, reflected in the mirror.

“What?”

“I like the way you say that, Frank. ‘My son’.”

He sobered slightly, listening as always to what wasn’t said. “You still miss it, don’t you? Family, bouncing kids on your knee and all that?”

Vinnie’s hands moved up to encircle his neck, rubbing gently into the muscle of his shoulders. “Only sometimes. But I wouldn’t trade it, Frank, not for what you and me have got. Anyway, I’m glad I’ve got Drake to dote over. He’s plenty for any would-be parent.”

A thousand responses came to mind, each cornier and more mushily embarrassing than the last, so he turned instead and slid his arms under his lover’s robe, holding on tightly. “Love you, Vince.”

Vinnie’s arms were just moving in reply when he heard a sharp gasp at the bedroom door. “Jeez,” Drake yelped, clearly stunned and embarrassed and extrapolating a helluva lot more from the innocent embrace than he should have, “don’t you guys ever give it a rest?”

“Give me some privacy!” Frank yelled back, stepping away and far enough into the bathroom not to flash his kid. To his abashed lover he growled, “This is what you thought you missed out on. Trust me, you didn’t miss a thing. They eat, cry, crap and sleep the first two years, break everything that was ever valuable to you the next three, and then they start the race to keep up with their friends—‘Jimmy’s got a new GI Joe Dad, when am I gonna get mine?’” Drake had already made good his escape, backing off down the hall and probably running like a rabbit for the sanctuary of a room without two guys making out in it, but Frank was on a roll. “—and then they break their arms in the fourth grade doin’ something you told them not to do while you suffer through their whining and complaining and scratching under the cast. And that’s the good part!” he roared, wanting to make sure Drake had the benefit of his paternal experience.

Vince was just laughing in the doorway. 

“What the hell are you lookin’ at?” Frank glared. “And cut that out!” Vince laughed even harder, crumpling to his knees in the door. “Get out of here,” he snarled, shoving at his lover’s shoulder to get him out the door. “Go and keep an eye on him before he has a heart attack in our living room.”

Wiping at his eyes, still laughing so hard his body was shaking, Vinnie picked himself up off the floor and left the room.

Frank waited, until he was sure Vince had gone the way of his son, then closed and locked the bathroom door. It was only then that he gave into the urge; he turned on the shower to disguise the sound, and laughed until all the leftover pain was expelled for good.


End file.
